Could Our Hospitals Handle A Large Disaster ?

Many in this country expect terrorists to strike our country again, as was done on 9/11/2001. All of us know that it's just a matter of time before a natural disaster strikes our area. Now we learn that many of our hospital emergency rooms simply could not handle either occurence. How's that for a scary situation?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just released a new report that says between 40% and 50% of emergency rooms experience crowding. In metropolitan areas that figure climbs to around 66%. The findings of this and other reports means these overcrowded emergency facilities are not equipped to deal with a large natural disaster, a disease ourbreak or a terrorist attack.

The report defines an emergency room as overcrowded if one or more of the following is true:

1. If there are so many patients that ambulances have to be diverted to other hospitals.
2. If people in urgent need of care had to wait an hour or more for treatment.
3. If 3% of patients simply gave up and left before being treated.

Using these criteria, the public hospital here in Tarrant County would qualify as overcrowded nearly 24 hours a day. I imagine the public hospitals in most big cities would be the same. The last time I took my son to emergency for breathing problems, we were there for 8 hours. When I complained, I was told he had been expidited service because a breathing problem was considered urgent. Sure enough, there were those who had been there for 12 hours and were still waiting.

The report listed some problems that they cite as causes for the overcrowding, including a shortage of nurses, a shortage of hospital beds [causing a back-up in emergency], and a declining number of hospitals offering emergency services. I'm sure these do cause some of the overcrowding, but I believe they are overlooking one of the major causes - poor and uninsured patients. The poor and uninsured are flooding emergency rooms with non-emergency illnesses because they can't afford to do anything else.

More nurses, hospital beds and more emergency care centers would help, but the biggest thing that would help is to clear our emergency rooms of non-emergencies. The only way to do this is to cover all citizens with health care.

For quite a while now, we have been the ONLY industrialized nation that does not offer health care coverage to all its citizens. It is time to remedy this. It is time to institute a single-payer system in this country. If we don't, when the next disaster occurs we may be in serious trouble.